Eleanor Duckworth

Who is Eleanor Duckworth?

Eleanor Ruth Duckworth is a cognitive psychologist, educational theorist and constructivist educator. A former student, colleague, leading translator and interpreter of Jean Piaget as well as renowned Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, she is one of the leading progressive educators today. Duckworth earned her Ph.D. at the Université de Genève in 1977. She grounds her work in Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder's insights into the nature and development of understanding and intelligence and in their clinical research method. She has developed the clinical interview method of the Genevan school into a teaching/research approach, now called "critical exploration". As a teaching-researcher and reflective practitioner she is especially interested in teaching and in the experience of learners and teachers of all ages, both in and out of schools. She applies Piaget's pioneering observations on intellectual development directly to her research in the development of ideas and to teaching and training prospective and experienced teachers at Harvard University and on many continents. Duckworth also has been an elementary school teacher. Her participation in the 1960s curriculum development projects Elementary Science Study and African Primary Science Program was germinal for her insights and practices in exploratory methods in teaching and learning. She has conducted teacher education and program evaluation in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and Canada. She also is a coordinator with Cambridge United for Justice with Peace. In 2011 the new website of Critical Explorers, a non-profit organization, was launched. Critical Explorers creates and shares inquiry-based curricula and teaching approaches that support critical exploration in public school classrooms.